Rift/Fault – Landscape Photographs of the North American Continental Plate
May 29th, 2015 – December 6th, 2015
Atrium Gallery – Marshall Fine Arts Center
Fall Hours: (September 1–December 6th, 2015)
Weekdays: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Weekends: 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The North American Plate, the tectonic plate on which most of our continent sits, is moving. At the Plate’s eastern boundary along the Atlantic Rift, in Iceland where the North Atlantic Plate meets the Eurasian Plate, the two tectonic plate edges are pulling apart resulting in vistas that are unstable and raw. But on its western edge, where the North American Plate meets the Pacific Plate along California’s San Andreas Fault the plates are scraping against each other the landscape is often striking in its visual normalcy, despite the massive shifting of the plates that is happening miles below.
These are the diverse landscapes that are captured by photographer Marion Belanger in Rift/Fault – Landscape Photographs of the North American Continental Plate, her first one-woman exhibition in the Philadelphia area. Belanger’s large-format color images document the splitting earth, steaming hot water, volcanic eruptions, and tree-less lava landscapes of the eastern edge of the plate; as well as the more familiar California topographies that make up the western boundary, despite the dramatic scraping and locking of plates that’s taking place underground, causing that region’s earthquake activity.
The concepts of persistence and change inform Berlanger’s clear and precise view of the ways that boundaries along the edges of the North American Plate demarcate differences. The photographs serve as both records and interpretations of physical spaces that are subject to sudden and violent change. Yet life in all of its quotidian forms continues with the rise and setting of the sun. These pictures are informed by extensive research conducted by the photographer before travelling to the outer edges of the Plate, and they challenge our sense of time and place by making manifest that boundaries and the land are not fixed.
Belanger earned her M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art, where she was the recipient of both the John Ferguson Weir Award and the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, and her B.F.A. from the College of Art & Design at Alfred University. Her photographs are included in many permanent collections including the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Haverford College. She has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a John Anson Kittredge Award, and an American Scandinavian Fellowship, and has been an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Arts. For more information on the artist: www.marionbelanger.com.
Fault #10, 2008 (Backyard, Daly City) Daly City is located just south of San Francisco and is the largest city in San Mateo County. Daly City is built along a cliff where the San Andreas runs along the base of. It is an active landslide that does take down homes along with the dirt and rock. The San Andreas Fault departs land here before returning onshore near Stinson Beach in Marin County.
Fault #26, 2012 (North Shore, Salton Sea) The Salton Sea covers up the southern end of the San Andreas Fault. There is no water outlet for the inland lake, and with an agricultural runoff and an ever-increasing salinity count the lake can no longer support many species or most fish. Once a thriving tourist area, the Salton Sea is in an ecological crisis.
Fault #45, 2012 (The Dish, Menlo Park) Constructed by the Stanford Research Institute in the early 1960s for the U.S. Department of Defense, and located on land leased from Stanford University, the 150-foot diameter radio reflector antenna is owned by the U.S. government. It is used for satellite calibrations, spacecraft command and telemetry, radio astronomy measurements, and weak signal detection and the related diagnosis of spacecraft conditions.
Fault # 53, 2012 (Cape Mendocino) This area is called the Mendocino Triple Junction. It is one of the few places in the world where three of the gigantic plates meet. Along the length of most of California, the San Andreas Fault defines the boundary between the Pacific Plate to the west and the North American Plate to the east. Along the fault line, the Pacific Plate slides horizontally in a north northwesterly direction with respect to North America.
Fault # 55, 2012 (Cape Mendocino) The San Andreas fault leaves the land and reaches the sea just off Cape Mendocino. Here the tectonic setting undergoes a significant transition, as the Pacific plate gives way to the Juan de Fuca plate, remnant of the much larger Farallon plate that has already been largely subducted beneath the North American continent.
Rift # 11, 2006 (Pseudocrator remnant, Reykjavik) The Rauðhólar (“red hills”) are remnants of a cluster of pseudocraters (when lava flows over wet ground to create a lava field, it heats up and creates eruptions of steam that burst through the lava). They are about 5200 years. American soldiers used soil from the pseudocraters to build an airstrip during WW II.
Rift #20, 2006 (Pipes transporting geothermal steam at Nesjavellir Power Station) Nesjavellir is the second largest geothermal plant in Iceland. It produces municipal hot water and electricity from geothermal hot springs.
Rift #23, 2006 Geothermal borehole structure at the Nesjavellir Power Station
Rift #26, 2007 (Volcanic excavation site, Heimaey) On January 23, 1973 the volcano Eldfell erupted without warning on the fishing island of Heimaey. Volcanic ash destroyed over 400 homes. The island grew one third larger. The harbor was saved from destruction by the constant spraying of cold seawater over the hot lava.
Belanger, Marion “Rift 31”, 2007.
Rift #51, 2011 (Geothermal pipes alongside a road in Hvergaerdi)
